A report in The Times by Fran Yeoman how a stalker who harassed a psychiatrist before making allegations that led to him being charged with rape terrorised another couple before she targeted him.
Police officers who investigated Jan Falkowski after Maria Marchese made her claims, and those who investigated her for stalking him, had no knowledge of her campaign of harassment and false allegations against earlier victims.
The case has echoes of the Bichard inquiry after the Soham murders in August 2002, which condemned failures in police intelligence-sharing and called for a national code of practice for police forces on creating, retaining, deleting and sharing records.
Dr Falkowski, a consultant psychiatrist at St Clement’s Hospital, in East London, was under suspicion of rape for 18 months as a result of Marchese’s allegations, before DNA evidence confirmed his innocence and the case was dropped in August last year. He was suspended from work for a year and lost his private practice as a result.
In December 2003, a month before she made the accusations, a prosecution against Marchese, 45, for stalking Dr Falkowski had been dropped by the CPS. Last month, after a second prosecution, she was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of harassment, making threats to kill Dr Falkowski’s former fiancée, Deborah Pemberton, and perverting the course of justice by making her false rape claims.
She bombarded the couple with threatening text messages and phone calls, which forced them ultimately to call off their wedding and destroyed their relationship. Marchese, of Bow, East London, is in prison awaiting sentencing (more)